Cloning a Debian machine

Published: Wednesday, Dec 26, 2007 Last modified: Sunday, Jan 11, 2026

On the machine you want to clone:

dpkg --get-selections > selections.txt

On the destination machine:

dpkg --set-selections < selections.txt

aptitude

Some rsync commands to follow:

debian:~# rsync -essh -rtpvz / root@192.168.0.141:/

ARGH! NOOOO. Does not work. Tries to do DUMB things like copy /proc and ./mnt

debian:~# rsync -essh -rtpvz /etc root@192.168.0.141:/etc

Doesn’t work for some reason…